As we walked back to school, an uneasy mix of emotions battled within me. I wasn't sure how to process them, so I tried to focus on my surroundings instead. A quiet day in a quiet little town. I hadn't really considered Sky Clay home, but it was cozy enough for a suburb. Cars trudged across half-filled streets, while pedestrians walked around without a care on a sunny winter day.

A group of girls in uniforms I didn't recognize were among the pedestrians. Like us, they were walking casually, laughing, arguing. One in front kept flipping a big coin with her thumb, which must have been a special kind of coin as I could hear the tink, tink, tink sound every time she flicked it upward. What was I doing when I was their age? It was a bit silly, they weren't that much younger than me, but I couldn't help but feel like I'd lost something in the time I spent stuck in labs. I don't regret growing up with Father's teachings at home, but...I do wonder how things would have been if I had a more 'normal' upbringing. I don't think that's unfair to think.

Another pang hit my gut, one I really couldn't process. I shook my head. What was I even doing? Why did seeing some random girls get me in such a strange mood? Why did a band practice and a chat over coffee with my friends get me this emotional?

"Yo, Ana," Sai said.

"Hm?"

"Just checking in, you good?" Sai said. "You're kinda spacing out."

"Am I?" I said.

"Myles was saying how much she hated the new Tower episode and you didn't even flinch, so, yeah," Sai said.

"I guess I am..." I said. "Though I'm not really sure..."

I don't know what I was going to say, I probably would have rambled until I came to some semblance of an idea why I was so out of it, but as I spoke I heard that loud coin clang against the ground, and an echoing scream. We all whirled, sensing that wasn't a normal shout. I spotted an alley in the direction those girls were walking, and without thinking I was already halfway across the street, sprinting with my guitar case tapping against my back with every step.

The group of girls were in the alley, and in front of them a pale man in a suit way too nice for him brandished a knife at them. Another, a bigger man in a matching suit, blocked the other end of the alley behind the girls. The idyllic feeling I usually had about this town vanished for a moment, stolen by these men.

"C'mon, hand whatever you got over!" The man said. "I won't hurt you...too much." He chuckled.

The girls backed up, each wearing a different expression of panic. I didn't need to say anything to my friends, we all knew what we had to do.

Sai used their power first, collapsing into a shadow on the ground, rushing to the bigger man. The man tried to take a step, but Sai's shadows held him in place.

"Hey, what the?" The bigger man said.

"What is it?" The knife-wielding man said, just a moment before I jumped, kicking him in the face. I held back a bit, but it still sent him careening into the brick wall to his right. Charmaine and Esther kicked the knife away, passing it to each other like it was a mat ball, then bound him with their powers while he was on the ground, while the Althea sisters ran around the girls, making a pincer formation as they each struck the bigger man, knocking him down as well with Sai handling the energy binding on him.

It was a brief moment of violence, but while it was happening it felt like an eternity. Once we were sure they were securely bound, Charmaine called an emergency service, and the rest of us checked on the girls.

"Are you alright?" Esther said.

The girl who had the coin crossed her arms, nodding. "Thanks, but we would've had that if you waited like fifteen more seconds."

"A thank you would be nice," Myles said, rolling her eyes.

"She did say thanks, she just said that, idiot," Ash said.

"Oh, sorry," Myles said. "Adrenaline's kinda making my hearing all. Weird."

"Really?" I said. The five didn't look too tough, but then again, maybe they were Cani.

"Yes, we absolutely would have had that," Another girl with twin tails said.

"You sure?" Sai asked. "These guys...well, we beat them pretty handily, but we have powers, so..."

"When she says absolutely, she means it," Another of the girls said.

"Yeppers," The fourth girl said.

"I think it's nice to have someone else fight for a change," The last girl yawned, playing with a retro looking phone that I wasn't sure even had a screen on it.

They'd looked scared when I arrived, but maybe that was my own fear spiking that made me think they did, because they were remarkably relaxed about having a knife pulled on them. We decided we'd wait for the emergency folks to arrive, so the girls left.

Near Sai's feet, I noticed the lead girl's coin glimmering in a puddle on the ground. "Hey, wait!" I picked up the coin and held it up. "You want this back?"

The lead girl waved. "Keep it, I got plenty more. Our token of appreciation."

With that, the girls left. Sai and I stared at the coin, which had an etching of a cartoonish frog on it.

"Huh," Charmaine said. "Huh..."

After the local emergency service folks took the goons away, I was at a loss for words. Sai had claimed the coin, but I demanded they share it between us, which they eventually agreed to on the way back to school.

"That was...hm," I said.

"Strange, strange day," Ash said.

"If we stop and think about every strange incident we run into, we'd probably lose our minds," Esther said.

"We always have something strange going on," Myles said.

"The shopping cart race is pretty strange in itself, yeah?" Ash said.

"Very," Charmaine said. "But we're experts in strange, so we're totally gonna crush it, right?"

"I'm sure," I said.

"Never a dull moment," Sai said.

I still wasn't exactly in a good headspace, and having a sudden fight like that didn't exactly help. But in a way, it did make things feel a bit clearer, and oddly prepared me well for the shopping cart related trials we were about to face.